Heavenly Bodies
by ArgentNoelle
Summary: "I'm in my room in the bunker when it happens again. The voices." / Cas & Jack, mid season 13 spoilers, wingfic


Heavenly Bodies

I'm in my room in the bunker when it happens again. The voices. They shoot through my skull with a piercing pain, a high-frequency white noise, and it makes me screw up my face, clutch my head in my hands as if I could somehow claw out the pain—but of course I can't. It's not physical, it's not molecular—those kinds of hurt have never really seem to stick with me. I guess the celestial kind is different, though. It's overwhelming, almost frightening—because even though I can now make out the voices within the tangled screaming, all I can hear is despair. It makes me feel cold, alone.

The door creaks open. "Jack?"

Castiel looks in with a worried expression, and I drop my hands, trying to put on an air of nonchalance.

"Hello father," I say. The voices are at least, finally, receding, so it's easier to get the words out, even if through slightly gritted teeth.

"Are you okay? I thought I felt…" Castiel trails off. His gaze travels across me, looking for signs of injury, distress, but I must pass muster, because he looks a little more awkward as the minute drags on and I don't answer. "Sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you."

"You aren't disturbing me!" I say. "Please, come in."

Castiel steps into the room and closes the door quietly behind him. Sam and Dean have been asleep for hours already, and the large, empty rooms of the bunker feel faintly unsettling when I am the only one awake. Last night I slept for five hours, four minutes and thirty-two seconds, so I'm wide awake now. The piles of movies Sam has let me borrow are still scattered across my bed. One is still playing, and I reach over to turn it off, closing the computer once I've done so.

I move over to make space for him on my bed, and he sits on the bed, his gaze traveling across the detritus. He smiles a little, fondly. "Ahh, I see you've found Sam's stash."

"He let me borrow them," I hasten to reassure him. "He said they were good."

"Have you discovered Netflix yet?" Castiel says. "It's an online repository for movies. It's quite remarkable."

"A little, yes," I say. A silence falls between us, but it doesn't feel awkward, the way silence seems to feel when humans are involved. At last, I finally bring up the courage to ask the question that has occurred to me ever since I saw him.

"Does it hurt?"

"I'm sorry?"

"The scar. It looks like it hurts," I say. For a moment, Castiel still seems uncomprehending. Then he looks down at where my hand is gesturing vaguely—past the trenchcoat, suit and tie, the muscles and sinews, the corporal body with its heart pumping blood, to the space between, beyond the atoms, where the being made of light is. There's a long, wounded furrow down the middle. It looks old, and faintly metallic; it glows with a soft, silvery sheen, and the vibrations there are faintly disharmonic, in a way that is almost unsettling, and even more fascinating.

"Oh, that?" Castiel says. He has a look of bemusement, as though he rarely thinks about it. Maybe it doesn't hurt, after all. "It's not a scar. At least, I don't think so. I don't remember ever not having it. The other angels…" he sighs. "They used to say I had a crack in the chassis. Well," here he smiles, ruefully. "They didn't used to. After all, you can't really claim that without saying God had made a mistake. But they all thought it, I believe. Even I… wondered."

My eyes have started to light with the concentration of focusing past material existence, and as if in answer, Castiel's eyes glow blue, as the being moves just a little closer to the surface, unfurling itself. He _trusts_ me. He's not afraid of me. I don't think he ever could be; and it's such a relief to know that at least someone in this universe doesn't feel like I'm nothing but some kind of time-bomb, waiting to go off.

"There's nothing wrong with you, Castiel," I say.

"That's good to know," Castiel says; still, somehow I can tell that he doesn't quite believe it. Perhaps that crack isn't a wound, but it still holds a hurt. The kind that appears in glances and whispered words of others, and turns into self-doubt; the kind that makes you want to curl up outside, under the dark sky. One ruined wing reaches out as though to wrap around me, and then checks itself. Castiel's eyes meet mine for the slightest moment as I follow the motion, and then he looks at his hands. "I, um…"

"I'm sorry about your wings," I say at last, quietly. "I thought maybe, when you returned from the dead… I don't know."

"Well. I suppose there are some things that can't be fixed that easily," Castiel says. He shrugs. "I've gotten used to it. It's no more than my brothers and sisters have to bear."

The bones, light and hollow, like a bird's, are covered here and there with clumps and patches of feathers, decaying and rotting with the smell of magic clinging to it. They must have been magnificent, once—silvery and dark, with a hint of blue; most of them are now ashen, without the glossy sheen they should have.

"You don't have to keep them away from me," I say, at last. "I don't mind."

The wing reaches out, hesitantly, and brushes over my shoulder with a sound like wind through a bone-flute. A few limp feathers spiral off to land beside me on my bed.

"It's okay," Castiel says.

I reach up to the wing behind me, but hesitate before I touch the feathers. "I don't want to make them fall…"

Castiel laughs. "You're a little late for that."

When I still hesitate, he says softly, "It's been a long time since someone's offered to groom me, and it will probably be the last. I don't care if they fall."

So I finally let myself touch his wings, combing my hands through the rough, scratchy texture of his feathers. Just as I had thought, they float down in droves as the faintest brush of my hand shakes them loose. When they land on the bed, they leave streaks of ash, and there is the feel of thunder in the room; a wide, open sky seems contained in the tiny space. The smell of ozone crackles faintly around us. I make my way through the whole wing, touching every feather, watching as they come free, and Castiel closes his eyes and make a sound that seems both happy and hurting. When I'm done, there is nothing left on the wings but smooth, polished bone, shining like the endless constellations of space.

"Thank you, Jack," Castiel says.

I realize I've caught my breath, and the blurriness before my eyes is because of tears. "You're welcome," I say, softly.

"Would you like a turn?" Castiel says.

"What?"

He gestures behind me.

"Oh," I say. "I suppose. Sure!"

He moves behind me and reaches to my wings. I don't usually think about them; they're just there, and they don't quite fit into reality the way my body experiences it, usually. But as he slides his hands across the feathers, combing them out, gently straightening them, I really notice the full depth of them for the first time; not as something that just happens to be there, but as a part of my body. I'm smiling, though I don't know why, and the soothing feel of Castiel—human fingers and grace and the essence that is him, resonating through it all—makes me feel safe, and warm.

Castiel starts speaking softly. "In heaven, those of us in the garrison would groom each other after a battle. There were less of those than you might imagine. Mostly, we were sentries, meant to watch and not interfere. Sometimes we would take vessels, and it would always be a little strange, stretching out after that."

"You miss it."

There's a long silence; and for a time, I think Castiel isn't going to answer.

"Yes. I wouldn't change where I am now, even with all the pain, for anything… but there are things I miss."

"The angels… they're looking for me because they're disappearing," I say. "Going extinct." The thought makes me feel terrible, and conflicted. I've looked up extinction on the internet, and it says that it's the fault of humans. They do this a lot, apparently. Cause whole species to disappear. I've never met an angel I felt comfortable around, besides my father, but that still seems wrong, in an awful, fundamental way that doesn't seem to match up to the goodness I've seen in almost every human I've encountered, deep and implacable. "They think I can do something about it."

"…I know."

"But, I…"

"No one's going to force you to help them, Jack," Castiel says, with a fierce determination under his calm voice. "I won't let them."

"But what if I wanted to?" I say, quietly. "I was put into this world for a reason. Everyone keeps arguing whether it's for good or for evil, but they know I have this power that no one else has, and I'll need to use it for something. And I… I want to do one good thing. I want to leave the world better than I found it."

"Then that's what you'll do," Castiel says. "I believe in you."

"I don't know how," I say.

"You'll figure it out," Castiel says. He brushes his hands once more across my feathers. "It's done."

I turn around and lean against him, into his shoulder, under the curve of his arm; the clean, bright smell of his coat against my cheek. "It's just so hard."

"I know," Castiel says. "I've done terrible things, Jack… and I know. It was because of me that the angels died, that they're disappearing. Because of stupid decisions I made, when I thought that I could shoulder the burden of the world on my own. But I realized that I didn't have to. And neither do you. I'll help you, and Sam and Dean will help you, because we are your family. And we'll fight, because that's what we do. And either we'll save the world, or we'll go down fighting."

.

.

.


End file.
